Specially designed wood strip flooring is often permanently installed in some sporting facilities that are dedicated to hosting basketball games, volleyball games, dancing events, and other activities that are compatible with the wood strip playing surface. Wood strip flooring is durable, sound, and inherently resilient. These characteristics enable the floor to absorb some of the shock of a participant's weight and in the case of basketball, the pounding of the ball, giving the floor a natural, lively feel that is unique to wood flooring and preferred by many athletics.
There are, however, a growing number of facilities that are designed to host a multitude of different activities that call for different flooring requirements. Although the above described permanent wood flooring system would be suitable for some events such as basketball games, it would not be suitable for many other events including figure skating, hockey games, concerts, auto shows, etc. Such facilities rely instead on temporary flooring systems that are suited for the particular type of event being hosted and which can be laid down and taken up fairly quickly and easily.
Temporary basketball flooring systems present a particular challenge since not only must they be designed for quick installation and removal, they must still meet the rigorous playability standards of a permanent wood strip flooring. When installed, temporary basketball flooring must exhibit the same soundness, firmness and resilience characteristics favored in permanent wood strip floors.
A typical temporary basketball flooring system is made up of a plurality of individual floor sections that interconnect with one another to provide a continuous playing surface like that of a permanent floor. One such temporary wood strip flooring system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,392, which is commonly assigned to the assignee of the present invention. Its floor sections are installed in staggered rows. Each floor section is constructed from a plurality of sleepers, a subfloor secured to the sleepers, and a wood strip flooring layer secured to the subfloor. The adjoining ends of adjacent sections have extended intermeshing finger portions of the wood strip flooring that laterally restrain the sections in each row. Suitable connecting hardware secures the sections in each row to those in an adjacent row.
It is important also that the floor sections not flex downwardly or upwardly at the joints, as such would detract from presenting a sound, uniform playing surface particularly at the joint regions. The flooring system disclosed in the aforementioned patent uses the traditional tongue-and-groove wood strip flooring material for the top playing surface. The tongue-and-groove formations are exposed along the outer edges of the side-most strips, and as well as along the sides of the fingers. When the sections are brought together, the tongue-and-groove formations interlock and act to support the wood strip flooring layer against such flexing at the joints.
One additional consideration in designing temporary sectionalized wood flooring systems of the above type is to construct them to be rugged so that they can withstand repeated installation and removal without sustaining damage. Should the exposed finger or tongue portions of a section become damaged, it may require repair. Although the flooring system disclosed in the aforementioned patent has shown to be highly durable, the present invention provides further improvements in durability and ease of assembly.
Another known sectionalized flooring system employs the same basic three layer floor section structure, but omits the finger joints at the ends of the sections and the traditional tongue-and-groove formations along the sides. The subfloor layer is extended beyond the marginal edges of the wood strip flooring layer and as well beyond the underlying sleepers along two sides of each section to serve as a tongue. The projecting tongue portion of the subfloor is covered by a metal cap. Along the remaining two sides of the section, the wood strip flooring is extended beyond the subfloor and sleepers to provide an overhang region. A length of metal C-channel is anchored to the underside of the overhung flooring layer and to the subfloor layer to provide an open channel or groove along the remaining two sides. There is nothing below the channel that supports it. The sleepers are set inwardly in line with or inward of the subfloor. When the sections are brought together, the metal-capped tongue of one floor section slides into the metal C-channel of an adjacent floor section to provide support to the sections at the joint. Such metal cap and channel members add to the cost and complexity of manufacturing sectionalized floor systems and introduce an element, namely the metal C-channel, that is susceptible to bending.
A flooring system constructed in accordance with the present invention overcomes or greatly minimizes the foregoing objections to the prior flooring systems discussed above.